April 20, 2004

Survivor Speaks on Holocaust

By | April 20, 2004

Steven Hess, a survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and frequent lecturer on the Holocaust, spoke yesterday in Myron Taylor Hall. Hess explained how he, his twin sister, and their parents survived the horrors of the concentration camp and how the Nazi regime “used all of the tools and freedoms of a democracy” to come to power.

Hess’s talk was sponsored by the Jewish Law Student Association.

Sharing his family’s experiences with the audience, Hess combined personal and actual history. Of the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, Hess said, “You can’t possibly in your mind’s eye imagine 6 million people.”

Two-thirds of the European Jewry was wiped out — about 4,000 people a day — between 1939-1941. The reason that people “didn’t run or fight,” was that it could not be imagined. “Down with Jews” ideas were not new, Hess said, but rather something Jews had always dealt with; but they could not imagine the Holocaust, with its “industrialized murder.”

Moreover, many people did not actively participate in the systematic murder of Jews, but took a passive stance on the matter. “Millions of people turned their backs, did not reach out, because Jews were different, and they felt, it’s not my problem,” Hess said.

Hess came from an upper-middle class family in Germany, where his father worked as a vice-president at a silk factory. In 1935-36, with the enforcement of the Nuremberg Laws, Hess’s father’s boss told them to leave the country and arranged for him to switch jobs with a manager in Holland. The family left Germany legally, which meant that they could take their possessions.

Hess said that he once asked his parents why they stayed in Holland, and did not continue to move away from the growing conflict. Holland had seemed perfect, they explained. “It was neutral in WWI, and had every intention of being neutral” again. “By 1938, though,” Hess said, “it was obvious that war was coming. We didn’t know when, but it was.”

At that time, however, “there was no moving further.” Hess’s father paid for citizenship in Paraguay, but the papers did not arrive until after the war. In May 1940, the Nazis invaded, and “the door was shut.”

Though the Dutch are not often seen as guilty in the Holocaust, Hess noted, this is not actually the case. “Holland was the worst death trap,” he said, noting that the small country, a neighbor to Germany, provided no place to hide, and that though they did not welcome the Nazis, “they did not want to make waves,” Hess said.

Every week, trains left from the transit center to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and two other camps. Death surrounded them, and the starvation was brutal. For his birthday, Hess’s mother sold her wedding band, her last piece of jewelry, to buy him a piece of bread with a sugar mix.

When the Russians invaded Auschwitz, those remaining were moved to Bergen-Belsen, which then became “the Bergen-Belsen of infamy,” Hess said.

The family was put on a train to a death camp. When the train would stop to take bodies off of those that had died, Hess’s father would struggle off and look for food, sometimes finding a potato or two. One day, the Nazis ordered everyone back on the train before his father was back yet, a moment that Hess said his mother called the “worst moment of her life.”

When his father came back to find the train gone, he waited for the next train, hopped on, and managed to hide under a railroad platform at a station and find his family. They were eventually freed by the Russians.

Later, the family was able to return to where they had lived in Holland. Possessions they had left with “well-to-do-friends had somehow disappeared,” Hess said, “but the cleaning girl still had everything we had left with her.”

Hess finished his presentation with a question-answer session with the audience. Michelle Katz ’04 asked Hess when his parents discussed the experiences with him, to which he answered that they never really did. Anytime he would complain as a teenager, though, he said his father would say, “You’ve been through worse, it will only make you stronger.”

Matt Walker law ’06 asked how much the Roosevelt administration might have known at the time about the situation in Europe. Hess said that “the Brits did know by 1942 of gas chambers,” but the camps and systematic murder were seen as a “side issue, and that the best thing for the Jews would be to win the war.” He added that governments, and even other Jews not comfortable with their own status, did not want information getting out, though they probably did not know the full scope of the horrors.

Audience responses to Hess’s lecture were positive.

“He was a great speaker and it was an amazing lecture,” said Ed Aronowitz law ’05.

Hess shared one last anecdote of how his experiences during the war affected him: one time, moving a broken microwave, he found an old, stale piece of bread that his wife reached for to throw away. “I didn’t let her throw it away,” he said. “I ate it. I still cannot see bread thrown away.”

Related

ByApril 21, 2004

ByApril 21, 2004

Having equaled its longest winning streak of the season after three consecutive wins over Penn, the baseball team (8-22, 4-8 Ivy) will try to make it four in a row against LeMoyne College this afternoon in Ithaca. The Red’s recent success has been fueled mainly by several key performances by the team’s pitching staff. Entering the series against the Quakers this past weekend with a combined 7.93 ERA, the Cornell pitchers held Penn to only 9 runs total over the four game series. Seniors Luke Staskal (1-3) and Dan Baysinger (0-3) set a strong tone for the whole weekend — pitching the first pair of games in the Saturday doubleheader. Each pitcher went the distance, pitching nine innings and giving up only two runs to the Quakers. However, the most dominant performance belonged to senior Dan Gala (2-4), relenting only one run while scattering ten hits in his complete game victory Sunday. Meanwhile, junior Tad Bardenwerper also threw a very respectable game, tossing five innings and holding Penn to four runs in a winning effort. Even with all the success on the mound, after losing the first game, it appeared that all of the strong pitching might go for naught. Once again, Cornell was unable to combine strong pitching with solid hitting, wasting Baysinger’s gem in the first game of the weekend, a 3-2 extra innings loss. Yet, the Cornell offense quickly reversed that trend, following that performance with an offensive explosion for nine runs in the following game. Furthermore, in each successive game the Red’s hitters notched at least five runs for the rest of the weekend. In the early game on Sunday, the batters even bailed out the pitching staff, scoring 5 runs over the last two innings to complete the come-from-behind, 6-4 victory. Commenting on the team’s turnaround after the first came, head coach Tom Ford said, “We got off to a rough start last weekend. We just were able to bounce back and kept working hard.” Pitcher Trevor Vieweg shared similar sentiments with the coach, while also offering a positive outlook on the rest of the season. “We’re playing baseball like we should,” the freshman said. “I expect us to continue it for the rest of the year.” Continuing this combination of strong pitching and timely hitting will not be easy against a strong LeMoyne squad. The Dolphins (18-12, 12-0 MAAC) have used its potent offense to ride its way to the top of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. Boasting a line-up that features seven starters batting over .300, LeMoyne has averaged a healthy 6.5 runs per game throughout the season. At the top of the Dolphin’s offense is senior Jeff Justice whose .391 average, 7 home runs and 27 RBI has him in the top five of all those categories in the MAAC. Recently, the LeMoyne offense has become even more volatile than usual, having averaged almost eight runs a game during a stretch in which the team won fourteen of fifteen contests. However, as that lone loss came at the hands of the Red in a 7-4 contest less than a week ago, the Dolphins should enter action today with aspirations for revenge. In that game, Cornell used Vieweg’s five strong innings of work in his first collegiate start to jump out to a quick lead before relievers came on to shut down the Dolphins for the rest of the game. The Red’s hitters also were strong, collecting 10 hits and seven runs while being the beneficiaries of six LeMoyne errors. Ford will again go with freshman starters against LeMoyne today, giving Vieweg (1-0) and his classmate Blake Hamilton (0-2) the starting nods for the doubleheader. In his four appearances this year, the righty has allowed sixteen hits and seven runs in his eight and two-thirds innings of work. “Based on their record and facing them last week, they’re a tough team to play,” Vieweg said. “But, I’m looking forward to facing them again.” Meanwhile, Hamilton will be making his first collegiate start, though he has logged plenty of innings in his eleven appearances as a reliever this year. Averaging almost a strikeout per inning, the southpaw has accumulated a 6.33 ERA . Though Cornell cannot expect LeMoyne to make as many mistakes as it made in last week’s game, the Red should still be in good position to extend their winning streak if they can continue their momentum from the weekend. Ford attributes much of that success to the team’s return to its play earlier in the season when solid pitching and timely hitting got it off to a 3-2 start. “We’re getting back to the way we played at the beginning of the season,” said Ford. “All we need to do is relax and play baseball.” Archived article by Scott ReichSun Staff Writer